28 days later

One of the concerns I have with this blog is that I might accidentally breach patient confidentiality, or just the basic confidentiality of friendship, with the stories I tell.  I'm told one of my fellow "professionals" has decided that, given the (perceived) anonymity on the internet, they can say anything about anyone in their blog; much to the embarrassment of their multinational employer and every pharmacist I know who has heard that story.

Fortunately, my friend has explicitly given me permission to tell the following story of how she is wasting your money.

Well, no she's not; but she's fighting against a policy that accusing her of doing that. Her GP's adopted a policy of only issuing 28 day prescriptions for long-term medication.  That's in case she stopped taking them after a couple of week, or changed the dose, or did something else that might mean a waste of tablets issued.

I don't need to go into the fortune that's wasted; but in her case it blatantly doesn't apply.  She will remain on that dose of that drug for at least the next ten years, probably the rest of her life.  And so consequently she would have to order a new prescription, collect it from the surgery (taking up a whole lunch break), take it to another pharmacy after work (as the one with the prescription collection service from her GP doesn't open during her working hours) every 28 days for the rest of her life. She's now won that argument, and has to only do this 4 times a year.

Time and time again there's conflicts like this between good practice that's essential for the smooth running of an underfunded health service, and a service that's tailored to the service user. 

 I'm glad she's got her way, as she's a terrible memory for ordering the repeats and non-concordance would cause deterioration costing a lot more than a few pounds of generic drug.

10-2-09